Dangerous Attraction

Examine the question of what makes art morally and/or politically dangerous (or from an opposing perspective, vital and liberating) as a form of “knowledge” and influence within a variety of cultural contexts.      Develop an essay with a structured argument using evidence from the texts. You do not need to include direct quotes from the texts, but for your evidence, you should point to specifics of the text (e.g. specific things that happen in the plot), make observations and develop implications in support of your argument, rather than just talk about the text generally. In terms of structure, you should have an intro paragraph with a thesis, at least one longish body paragraph per text you discuss, and a conclusion. Avoid just summarizing the plot: jump right into your analysis to support your argument. Make sure that you give your discussions of each text approximately equal weight. You should be making an argument about the relation between texts tied to the specific questions of the prompt. As with the papers for this course, there’s no need to “answer” all of the questions posed. They are there only to prompt you to focus on a certain dimension of the readings. Please incorporate in your essay some discussion of at least four texts from the course (which might be a novel, play, poem, film, graphic novel, essay, or philosophic text). The total word length of your essay should be around 1200 words.     Here is the comprehensive list of texts that you may choose from (you will choose to write on four of them): Plato, selection from Republic Aristotle, selection from Poetics Flaubert, Madame Bovary Allen, “The Kugelmass Episode” Browning, “Porphyria’s Lover” Browning, “My Last Duchess” Rossetti, “In an Artist’s Studio” Wilde, Picture of Dorian Gray Berger, Ways of Seeing Thompson, Culture as Weapon Baraka, “The Revolutionary Theatre” Jones, Dutchman Jones, The Slave Satrapi, Persepolis Cradle Will Rock